Gail Pool's Blog, page 11

Recommendation: Wonderful Book!

Many people reading this will no doubt already have read Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. But if you haven't, I really recommend it--and if you have, perhaps this will make you think about reading it again.

An American Road Trip

Roads: Driving Americas Great Highways By Larry McMurtry. Touchstone, 2000, 206 pp. Combining two passionsfor roads and for travel booksLarry McMurtry has created a road narrative that takes him through America, in spurts. The roads in this book are the interstates, the great roads, the major migration routes that carry Americans long distances quickly, whose precursors he believes were the great roads of the nineteenth century: the rivers of the Americas. Beginning in January, Roads takes us...

New Review: An American Road Trip

Roads: Driving Americas Great Highways By Larry McMurtry. Touchstone, 2000, 206 pp. Combining two passionsfor roads and for travel booksLarry McMurtry has created a road narrative that takes him through America, in spurts. The roads in this book are the interstates, the great roads, the major migration routes that carry Americans long distances quickly, whose precursors he believes were the great roads of the nineteenth century: the rivers of the Americas. Beginning in January, Roads takes us...

An Appetite for Paris

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris By A. J. Liebling. With an introduction by James Salter. North Point Press, 1986. (Parts originally published earlier in New Yorker.) 167 pp. The eaters apprenticeship, though less arduous, must be as earnest as the cooks, writes A. J. Liebling in Between Meals, eight essays that explore his education in the art of eating. This course of study took place of course in France (It goes without saying that it is essential to be in France.) beginning in 1926, w...

New review! For Foodies and Francophiles: "An Appetite for Paris"

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris By A. J. Liebling. With an introduction by James Salter. North Point Press, 1986. (Parts originally published earlier in New Yorker.) 167 pp. The eaters apprenticeship, though less arduous, must be as earnest as the cooks, writes A. J. Liebling in Between Meals, eight essays that explore his education in the art of eating. This course of study took place of course in France (It goes without saying that it is essential to be in France.) beginning in 1926, w...

Westward Ha! or Around the World in Eighty Cliches

Westward Ha! or Around the World in Eighty Clichs By S. J. Perelman. Drawings by Hirschfeld. Simon and Schuster, 1947, 1948, 159 pp. Travel provides rich material for satire. From the misinformed plans, to the mishaps en route, to the boring photographic record foisted on friends, journeys offer boundless scope for mockeryof oneself (the traveler), of others, of the ways of the world, and of travel itself. S. J. Perelman takes all of these on in his wild romp Westward Ha!, the story of the wo...

15 Funniest Travel Books Ever Written (in English)

If you love humor in travel books, you might want to have a look at CNN's list of "The 15 Funniest Travel Books Ever Written (in English)." (Just click on the photo for the link.) There are some excellent titles here, perhaps including some that you haven't read. Of course, I don't entirely agree with their selection--wasn't Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country funnier than his Walk in the Woods? And how could a list like this omit Eric Newby? But as Barnaby Rogerson, chair of the Donlan Trav...

Travel Quotation: Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury Cathedral is the "single most beautiful structure in England." ―Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

Wonderful (and meaningful) review!

This is an endorsement I'm especially proud of, because it comes from an anthropologist who was actually in the field:

Lost Among the Baining "is undoubtedly the best written account of, and reflection on, fieldwork I have read, and --perhaps -- the best book on fieldwork (period) I have come across. "

Joel Savishinsky, Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus), Ithaca College, author of Trail of the Hare.

Travel Quotation: Dun Aengus

Dun Aengus is "not only one of the wonders of Ireland, but of the entire western world." ―Eric Newby, Round Ireland in Low Gear